"The districts that contain Chicago, Los Angeles and New York Cityranked last in terms of federal gun law enforcement in 2012, according to a new report from Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks federal data.

Federal gun crimes include illegal possession of a firearm in a
school zone, illegal sale of a firearm to a juvenile, felon, or drug
addict, and illegal transport of a firearm across state lines. In
Chicago, the majority of gun charges last year were for firearms
violations.

The districts of Eastern New York, Central California, and Northern
Illinois ranked 88th, 89th and 90th, respectively, out of 90 districts,
in prosecutions of federal weapons crimes per capita last year,but it
wasn't always this way. All three districts fell lower on the list than
they had been in years past. In 2010, for example, Chicago was 78th in
federal weapons prosecutions.

These cities also have some of the nation's most restrictive gun
laws, as well as the most active mayors in championing gun control.New
York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Los Angeles
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are all members of the national Mayors
Against Illegal Guns campaign.

D.C., which also has tough gun laws, was in the lower half of the
list in 2012, coming in at 78th. In 2011, D.C. prosecuted a higher
number of gun crimes, coming in at number 49.National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre first pointed to the report on Meet the Press Sunday,
when he demanded to know why the national press corps wasn't asking the
White House or U.S. attorneys general to explain lax federal
enforcement of gun laws....

Requests for comment from the U.S. Attorney's offices in New York and
California were not immediately returned. But the U.S. attorney's office
in the Northern District of Illinois maintains that federal weapons law
enforcement is among the top priorities of their office....

The TRAC report notes that many more gun arrests happen at the state
and local level than happen at the federal level, and that it's
difficult to assess how many prosecutions happen overall.

While the districts that ranked lowest last year for federal gun
crime prosecutions all contained major cities, the districts at the top
of the list for its enforcement were almost exclusively rural. The
districts of Southern Alaska, Kansas and Western Tennessee ranked first,
second and third in prosecmutions of federal weapons laws per capita
last year.

Susan Long, a statistician and co-director of TRAC, said the data
revealed a stronger federal enforcement presence in rural areas than
urban ones. "If taxpayers of [a certain area] don't pass strong gun
control measures ... the feds pick up the ball," she said. "But now
we've got sequestration cutting back on all these resources."

The U.S. court system has said
that sequestration will have a major impact on the federal judiciary,
including the furlough of some court employees, cuts to the federal
defenders' office and fewer probation officers for criminal offenders." via Michael Savage

"Almost half of family doctors and practice nurses do not believe their local
hospitals are good enough to treat their own families, a poll has found."

"Victoria Vaughan, the editor-in-chief of Campden Health, the publishing and
research company which conducted the poll, said: “If GPs wouldn’t want their
own family members referred to their local hospital then there is clearly
something wrong.”"...(near end of article) via Michael Savage

"Fraud was committed to get the name of Barack Obama on the ballot in
St. Joseph County in 2008. A guilty plea entered Thursday could leave a
stain on the Obama victory.At the center of this story is Butch
Morgan, a longtime Democratic Party leader who lost his post as St.
Joseph County chair when the scandal broke. Morgan is accused of telling
three people to forge names on a ballot petitionincluding Bev Shelton
who pleaded guilty to forgery and fraud.

She has agreed to testify against the others.

"If she testifies truthfully," says Special Prosecutor Stan Levco, "we will recommend that she receives no jail time."

Morgan
is scheduled to go on trial next month. In the meantime, there is
speculation that the 2008 election could have turned out differently if
not for crimes committed.

"You could argue that if President
Obama wouldn't have been on the ballot," says State GOP Chairman Eric
Holcomb, "would he have spent so much time and money?"

Obama won Indiana in 2008, something no Democrat running for President had done since 1964.

The forged signatures came from petitions for a candidate for
governor and were placed on petitions for both Obama and Hillary Clinton, who won a narrow victory in the 2008 Indiana Democratic
Primary. While that election is long over, Republicans still hope to
take advantage of the voter fraud scandal"...

(continuing): "We're not trying to
overthrow a past election result by any stretch of the means," says
Holcomb, "but this just highlights that the Democratic Party in Indiana
will go to any length to try to win an election.""...via Lucianne

"In a paradoxical way,Obama's re-election victory coupled withcongressional Democrats adding to their numbers may have helped Boehner.
Some of those wins came at the expense of the Tea Party, the
conservative movement whose affiliated House members have been very
willing to stand up to Boehner.

In recent weeks, Boehner...has gotten his entire leadership team to sign his tax-raising,
fiscal-cliff counteroffer....

Despite complaints from conservative activists and bloggers, however, Boehner remains the most powerful Republican in Washington.".

==================== commenter

====================

"Reply 16 - Posted by:
cgood, 3/31/2013 9:56:21 AMYou haven´t heard a word from the Republicans about the
widespread fraud that occurred in the last election. If the ´victims´
are content with the status quo, what are the rest of us to do to
protect ourselves? I have never been this discouraged or frightened
about the state of my country before."

Lambasted by business and environmental groups as a
“stealth tax”, the price floor is expected to raise up to £3.2 billion
over the next three years.

Although critics say the funds should be ploughed back into the green energy
technologies that the price floor is intended to support, the money
will instead be absorbed for general use by the cash-strapped
Exchequer.

Michael Murphy, energy partner with MacRoberts
Solicitors in Glasgow, said all business and residential consumers would
be affected, with heavy industries, hospitals, councils and other
large-volume users bearing the brunt of the increases.

“What we
have said to our clients is that we are telling you this not because
there is a clever way to avoid it – we are telling you this because
your utility bills are going to rocket,” he said.

The net effect
will be to take money out of a fragile economy, with firms committing
more of their cash to meet rising operating costs.

“That is the first call, and will come before investment in growth and new jobs,” Murphy added.
.
In
an apparent effort to pre-empt any negative backlash against
tomorrow’s price increases, the Department of Energy & Climate
Change (Decc) released a report last week, which claimed that although
utility bills will continue to rise, they will be 11 per cent lower by
2020 than they would have been without the government’s energy
policies.

However, the Decc report also conceded that many businesses are
bearing a bigger share of the burden brought by government policy.

Whereas 9 per cent of the average household bill goes towards the cost of energy
and climate-change policies,bills for medium-sized business users are
21 per cent higher as a result of these UK government initiatives. That
figure will rise to 22 per cent by 2020.

Energy-intensive users
pay an extra 1 to 14 per cent to fund UK government policies, rising to
between 6 and 36 per cent by 2020.

The UK government has said it
will compensate those at risk of being driven out of business via a £250
million package of support, but details of how this will work have not
been finalised.

Certain industries such as steelmaking will
receive further support by way of an exemption from the separate
Climate Change Levy.

Although the Chancellor has promised to
extend support beyond 2015, Murphy said this will not keep pace with
the escalating price floor.

“The really concerning news is that
the £16 per tonne you pay from Monday is going up to £30 per tonne by
2020 and £70 by 2030,” he said. “We have to brace ourselves for energy
costs going up quite substantially in the next 15 years.”

The UK
levy is intended to drive investment in low-carbon technologies by
propping up the current low price for the “right to pollute” under the
European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

Keeping the cost of energy derived from fossil fuels high underpins the investment argument for green power.

However, the abundance of ETS credits available means the price for
emitting the equivalent of one tonne of carbon fell to as low as £3 in
January and is now trading at between £4 and £5 per tonne."

"The 878,300 who decided not to have an official assessment of whether they
were fit for work was more than a third of the total number of people
claiming sickness-related benefits.

The statistics also revealed that some claimants cited conditions such as
“blisters”, “sprains and strains” and “acne” as preventing them from having
a job.
.

More than 46,120 people claimed incapacity benefit because of “behavioural
disorders due to the use of alcohol” while 29,130 claimants cited drug use.
.

Last night ministers said the figures showed the full extent of how millions
had been “trapped on welfare” for decades. Grant Shapps, the Conservative Party chairman, said the old system was “evil”
and accused Labour of using sickness benefits to “hide the unemployed” when
the party was in power.

The statistics emerged ahead of a raft of controversial changes to the
benefits system which will come into force this week - including the
“bedroom tax” which sees council and social housing tenants facing
reductions to their benefits if they have empty rooms in their homes.

Also coming in is an overall benefits “cap”, which will prevent any household
receiving more than £26,000 a year in total benefit payments - a figure set
to reflect the average gross salary of a full-time worker....

Another 837,000 who did take the a medical test
were found to be fit to work immediately, while a further 367,300 were
judged able to some level of work.

Only 232,000 (one in eight of those tested) were classified by doctors to be
too ill to do any sort of job....
. The vast majority of these have since dropped their claims or been found to be
fit for work, according to the Department for Work and Pensions figures."...via Lucianne

Saturday, March 30, 2013

"The publisher of the struggling Washington Post made over
$2.4 million last year, and at least three other executives made over $3
million while the left-leaning newspaper slashed benefits for its
employees and laid off others.

According to Securities and Exchange filings reviewed by the Washington City Paper,publisher Katharine Weymouth (pictured) earned $2,436,413 in salary and
bonuses last year. Her "haul came from her $625,000 salary, a bonus of
$611,413, and a $1,200,000 payment for a 2009-2012 incentive plan." She
also "received a 3.5 percent raise this year, with her new salary set at
$646,875." She received her raise even though The Post Co.'s share
price fell three percent in 2012.

According to the City Paper, "Weymouth's uncle, Post Co. CEO
and Chairman Donald Graham, made $877,724," her mother, Elizabeth
"Lally" Weymouth made $300,000 in 2012 as the paper's editor-at-large,
and "Laura O'Shaughnessy, Graham's daughter, made $150,000 in salary and
$22,750 in bonuses in 2012 for her role as the CEO of Social Code, a
company owned by the Post Co."

Those not in Weymouth's family also made millions at the Post.

According to the filings, "Senior Vice President of Finance Hal S.
Jones made $3,612,562," Senior Vice President of Planning and
Development Gerald M. Rosberg made $2,258,617, Senior Vice President Ann
L. McDaniel made $3,226,678, and Senior Vice President and General
Counsel Veronica Dillon made $3,064,015.

In addition, Dillon received perks like "financial advice and living expenses reimbursements worth $82,468."" via Instapundit

"Rand Paul really struck a chord with many conservatives when he declared
at CPAC that “the GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered,——I don’t
think we need to name any names here, do we?” But will he adhere to
his own admonishment?...

If you want a dictionary definition of the GOP establishment, it is
Mitch McConnell and those who surround him. If you want to know the
paradigm of stale, moss-covered leadership, it’s Mitch McConnell.
Nobody could assert with a straight face – even those who personally
admire him – that Mitch McConnell is an inspiring leader who has
provided bold leadership against the big government establishment in
Washington. He has voted for all of the things Rand Paul has inveighed
against for years. He has cut backroom deals with Biden to raise taxes
and the debt ceiling. He has been running around ridiculing Obamacare
while doing nothing do defund it through the budget process until Ted
Cruz forced his hand – and even then, he voted for the CR which
ultimately contained that funding.

Now he is running around town as a born-again bare-knuckled fighter
for conservatives. He is schlepping around that tower of Obamacare
regulations and letting every media outlet know that he hates Obamacare
and taxes (after cutting the deal with Biden). Why the sudden breath of
fresh air and fighting spirit? Well, he perceives a threat on his
right flank back home from the same Tea Party forces that helped elect
Rand Paul to the Senate and Thomas Massie to the House. If nothing
else, it proves the effectiveness of competition within the party, even
the mere threat or perception that such competition exists.

Yet,Rand Paul has preemptively
endorsed Mitch McConnellbefore any specific primary challenge has
presented itself.McConnell has tapped Rand Paul’s campaign manager,
Jesse Benton, to run his reelection bid, and is running around saying that the two senators are “inseparable.”
Look, I’ll also endorse Mitch McConnell against the eventual Democrat,
but why preempt any competition? How are we ever going to get rid of
the moss if we are going to block out competition to the leader of the
moss-covered Republicans?

We all get where Rand Paul is coming from. Nobody ever expects the
sitting junior senator to ever come out against the senior senator from
the same state who happens to also be the minority leader. We get that
he wants to run for president and needs access to McConnell’s
establishment donors.But he would be well advised not to follow in the
footsteps of Rick Santorum and stomp around the state with someone who
campaigned against him the primary. He’d be well served not to hitch
his wagon too closely to someone who is not exactly that popular in the
state. Does he really want to be “inseparable” with McConnell’s
26-year-old moss, covered record?

You can’t change the status quo with the consummate iteration of the
status quo. Voters of Kentucky realize that as well. That is why they
elected Rand Paul over McConnell’s choice, whom McConnell considered
more electable. Speaking of electability, the irony is that at a time
when we need to win back the Senate, McConnell might be the only man who
could lose this seat for us in the general election. He spent $21
million to barely eke out a victory against a Democrat in 2008 in a
state Obama lost by 23 points....

Competition is healthy in the primary and it is healthy for the
general election. Let’s wait until the field matures and back the best
candidate in the primary and general elections. No senator is too big
to fail. No senator owns a seat for life. Every six years he must make
the case why his previous six years constitute the type of
representation that earns him another term. In the primary, he must
vouch for why he is the best candidate to represent conservative
voters. Conservatives in Kentucky are looking for another leader like
Rand Paul. Are they getting such leadership from McConnell?

Why is it that McConnell always leads from behind? Why is it the usual
three amigos – Paul, Lee, and Cruz – are threatening to filibuster the
gun bill, and not the minority leader? Maybe he will support them in
last moment like he did with Rand’s filibuster or with the defund
Obamacare effort from Ted Cruz. But why should we not look for another
star from Kentucky, and perhaps, a new minority leader."...

"Once again the supine posture of the GOP allows Democrats to define
the rules of engagement. Don Young’s use of a slur to describe Hispanic
migrant workers has put the Democratic Party into overdrive as
they vow to hang his stupidity around the necks of Republican office
holders across the nation. Republicans, knowing their role, have thrown Young over the sideand prostrated themselves before the media.

Don Young is an imbecile and probably a bigot. He is not someone any Republican should want speaking for the Party.

But doesn’t anybody here know how to play this game? When the Lieutenant Governor of California referred to black people as Niggers in a Black History Month speech,
what did the GOP do? When West Virginia Senator, Robert Byrd, a former
recruiter for the Klan, called people Niggers in a nationally televised interview, what did the GOP do?

The correct answer to both questions is…Nothing.

They got zero campaign mileage from either slur — not that they tried
to get any. In both cases they let the unhooded Democrat apologize his
way out of outrageous and indefensible calumnies. No political price was
paid by either man or the party they represent.

When Democrats fumble the ball we pick it up, hand it back to them
and resume the game as normal — with the Democrats on offense. Always on
defense. Always on defense. And we wonder why the scoreboard with
minority voters is so lopsided.

As Don Young is leaving, I wish he’d hold the door open so Priebus, Boehner, McConnell and the rest could go with him."

"A list of companies and politicians that had loans written off by
banks at the heart of Cyprus' bailout crisis has been published in
Greece.

There is already anger on the island that loans with the Bank of
Cyprus, Laiki Bank and Hellenic Bank often running into the hundreds of
thousands – and, in one case, millions of euros – have allegedly been
wiped out.

The list, reported in Friday's Ethnos newspaper and which has
been handed to the Cypriot parliament's ethics committee, includes the
names of politicians from Cyprus' biggest parties (excluding the
socialist EDEK and the Greens).

Questions are being asked as to why banks at which – in the case
of Bank of Cyprus and Laiki – deposits of above €100,000 face a levy of
an estimated 40% apparently forgave the loans of politicians and other
senior figures in the country's public adminstration.

According to information acquired by Enet.gr, the list was
originally leaked by the Cypriot parliament to a member of the European
Parliament, and subsequently to journalists in America, before arriving
in Greek hands.

According to Ethnos newspaper, the following loans were written off:Bank of Cyprus
– A hotel company (with links to the communist AKEL party): Entire €2.81m loan written off
– Labour union: From €554,000 loan, €193,000 forgiven
– Company: From €1.83m loan, €111,000 forgiven
– Well-known conservative Democratic Rally (DISY) MP: From €168,000 loan, €101,000 forgiven
– Company linked to DISY MP: From €61,000 loan, €11,000 forgiven
– Company belonging to the brother of a former minister with the
centrist Democratic Party (DIKO): From €1.595m loan, €1.285m written
off
– Former DISY MP: From €58,000 euro loan, €26,000 forgiven
– Former DISY MP: From €84,000 euro loan, €16,000 forgiven
– Former mayor of a large town: From €105,000 loan, €17,000 forgiven
– Company linked with the daughter-in-law of a DIKO MP: From €625,000 loan, €330,000 written off
– Company of person related to a member of board of directors of Bank of Cyprus: From €839,000 loan, €237,000 forgiven
– Company apparently linked to a former minister: From €708,000 loan, €399,000 written off

Laiki Bank
– Former AKEL MP: €39,000 loan written off
– Former DISY MP: €71,000 loan written off – Former DISY MP: €54,000 loan written off
– Company 51% owned by Cypriot politician, appears to have had $5.8m of debt written off
– Former spouse of leading ministry official: €18,500 loan written off
– Company owned by ambassador: €14,000 euro loan written off

Hellenic Bank
– Company owned by a MP from a smaller party: From €1.65m loan, €543,000 written off."

"A prominent group of anti-euro German economists and business leaders
has formed a political party to challenge Germany's support for
euro-zone bailouts, a move that could test the ruling center-right
coalition's hold on conservative votes in the fall general election. .With just six months until the election, the new party, which calls
itself Alternative for Germany, is unlikely to gain enough traction to
win seats in Parliament, analysts say. Yet even if the party comes in
below the 5% threshold needed to win representation, it could still
attract enough conservative votes to prevent a return of the current
coalition government, a combination of Angela Merkel's Christian
Democrats, their Bavarian sister party, and the pro-business Free
Democrats.

If Ms. Merkel's coalition were to fail to garner enough support in
the fall, she would likely be forced to reach out to the center-left
Social Democrats, Germany's other mainstream political party, to form
what Germans call a "grand coalition." While such a combination would
enjoy a large parliamentary majority, it would likely force Ms. Merkel's
party to abandon a more-conservative agenda.

Ms. Merkel's party has gone on the offensive. "If this group
criticizes our euro policies, we will stand firm," Volker Kauder, the
head of the conservative parliamentary group, said last week. "There is
an alternative to everything—even to the euro. But every alternative to
the euro is much worse for Germany."

"We are convinced that the euro zone should be dissolved," said Bernd
Lucke, an Alternative for Germany leader who quit the CDU party to
protest euro-zone bailouts....

Germany's future path may well depend on how the euro crisis evolves
in the coming months. Germans have largely supported Ms. Merkel's course
despite widespread unease over the mounting cost of the bailouts. If
Italy's political instability or other events lead to renewed
financial-market upheaval and popular angst over the euro's future,
crisis-weary Germans may be more likely to support the movement.

The TNS Emnid polling group last week released the results of a
one-question survey that suggests there could be support for an
anti-euro party. About 26% of those polled by Emnid for the weekly news
magazine Focus said they could imagine voting for an anti-euro party,
most of those first-time voters or disgruntled conservatives. The poll
didn't mention Alternative for Germany. Analysts cautioned that voter
openness to supporting such a party wouldn't necessarily translate into
actual votes.

The new party's leadership is made up of a group of well-known
euro-skeptics. The most prominent party backer is Hans-Olaf Henkel, a
former chief executive of IBMIBM+1.14%
Europe and former president of Germany's leading industry federation,
the BDI. In 2010, Mr. Henkel became a leading euro critic with the
publication of his book, "Save Our Money! Germany Is Being Sold Out—How
the Euro Fraud Endangers Our Prosperity."

Others backing the party
include Wilhelm Hankel, Karl Albrecht Schachschneider and Joachim
Starbatty, economists who have co-written books arguing for dissolving
the euro.The three filed a complaint with Germany's Constitutional
Court in 2010, saying Germany's support for rescuing euro member Greece
violated the constitution and the treaty on monetary union's no-bailout
clause. The court ruled against them in 2011. The euro critics continue
to challenge the euro-zone bailouts in court. A final decision on a
constitutional change to the European Stability Mechanism, or ESM, the
euro zone's permanent bailout fund, is still pending and could come by
July.

The party held its first public meeting last week in Oberursel, a
suburb north of Frankfurt, Germany's financial center and home to the
European Central Bank. More than 1,000 people packed into the
wood-paneled auditorium, so many more than expected that organizers
couldn't begin the meeting until they had removed several room dividers
to create space for the standing-only crowd.

Past anti-euro parties have appeared nationalist, often with links to
the far-right, espousing a "Germany first" program and bashing Europe.
Anti-European policies that flirt with the far-right don't go over well
with German voters. That is why the Alternative for Germany is embracing
Europe, but insisting that German support for covering the debt of
other euro members should stop. Party leaders argue that in the interest
of Europe, Ms. Merkel's drive for more European policy integration to
bolster the euro must stop.

"The euro has proved to be a cause of great discord and polarization
for Europe," Mr. Lucke said at the party's opening rally to a round of
raucous applause.

The crowd at the rally consisted mainly of middle-aged men frustrated
with the established parties. German political analysts describe this
group as "Wutbürger," or "enraged citizens"—middle-class citizens who
feel the established parties are selling them out."...

[Ed. note: Was Tea served at the meeting?....]

(continuing): "Many of these people no longer vote, which gives Alternative for Germany a large of pool of voters to mobilize, analysts said.

"These are not people who are in dire straits," said Gero Neugebauer,
a political scientist from Berlin's Free University. "These are people
who are afraid of losing their standard of living. That's why in the
end, they will damage the Christian Democrats and the [Free Democrats]
more than the [Social Democrats]."" via BBC radio

"As the Federal Reserve
pumpity-pump-pump-pumps so the rich can get richer in the very stock
market in which Democrats and the media ensured you and I wouldn't be
allowed to invest our Social Security, according to a study by Sentier Research, out here in the real world, wages took a major dive of 1.1% in just a single month.

According to the New York Times (who hid the bad news in a headline that reads, "Median Household Income Down 7.3% Since Start of Recession"),
this is the first time in over a year a one-month drop in median annual
income was statistically significant. Moreover, since the beginning of
Obama's "recovery," median income has dropped a full six-percent.

Median annual household income in
February 2013 was $51,404, about 1.1 percent (or $590) lower than the
January 2013 level of $51,994. The numbers are all pretax, and are
adjusted for both inflation and seasonal changes. …

While inflation is still quite
low, income growth has been so weak that even very little inflation is
enough to wipe out whatever gains households are seeing in their
paychecks.

The longer-run trends are even more depressing.

Yes, "so depressing" that The New York Times hides the news in a headline that obscures the news.

Yesterday we learned that during the last quarter of last year our economy grew by only .04%.

Jobless claims rose Friday.

Out here in the real world, people are
hurting. There are hardly any jobs, no growth, incomes are going
backwards, and just driving by a gas station sign puts a dark cloud over
your head.

The media, though, ignore all of this.
Because Obama demands it, the media are instead on a permanent
gays/guns/immigration culture war rotation.

Meanwhile, people suffer in this economy in part because Obama is feeling zero media or political pressure to fix it."

=======================================

BBC hides news behind deceptive headlines too:

"US Growth is Faster than Expected," BBC headline on Firefox headlines is how BBC describes 3/28/13 news of higher jobless numbers and revised .4 GDP in Q4 2012 from .1 They've kept this headline up for almost 2 days. (It's now 2:32AM ET, Sat. Mar. 30). When you click through to the story the headline is slightly more realistic but still misleading and not helpful.Not until sentence #6 in the storydo they tell you this "growth" "has not changed the picture of the economy."In 2 days BBC still hasn't put up a headline about US jobs numbers that came out Thursday morning along with the revised GDP number. In fact, they lie about the job numbers in the GDP story. They place the lie in the last sentence of the article just like a third grader would: "Although US joblessness has fallen, the Fed said it wanted to see signs of a long-term trend of falling unemployment."Obviously, the economy is never "coming back" because the US private sector has beenkilled offor 'fundamentally transformed' toserve a smirking, massive federal bureaucracy. But the first headline--the deliberately misleading and therefore lying headline---is all many people will see. Here's the story you get when you click on the happy headline above:

"Many Christians doubt David Cameron’s
sincerity in pledging to protect their freedoms, former Archbishop of
Canterbury George Carey says today.

In
an article for the Daily Mail, Lord Carey squarely accuses ministers of
‘aiding and abetting’ discrimination against Christians.

He
says he believes there is an ‘aggressive secularist and relativist
approach’ behind the Government plans to legalise gay marriage and says
the Prime Minister has ‘done more than any other recent political
leader’ to ‘feed’ Christian anxieties.

As a dramatic new poll released on the
eve of Easter Sunday revealed that more than two-thirds of Christians
feel they are now part of a ‘persecuted minority’, Lord Carey insists
the Government must do more to demonstrate its commitment to pledges to
stand up for faith.

The survey suggests churchgoers increasingly feel religious freedoms are under assault from aggressive secularism. Critics
say court rulings against Christians who want to wear crosses at work,
and legal action preventing prayers before council meetings, have helped
make people feel marginalised.

In the article, Lord Carey expresses
particular alarm about apparent Government support for a campaign by
Labour MP Chris Bryant to turn the 700-year-old Parliamentary chapel of
St Mary Undercroft [seen in photo above] into a multi-faith prayer room so that gay couples
can get married there.

The ComRes poll of 535 regular
churchgoers, commissioned by the Coalition for Marriage (C4M), reveals
that more than two-thirds (67 per cent) of Christians feel that they are
part of a ‘persecuted minority’.The
march of secularism means that if trends continue, Britain will no
longer be a Christian country by 2030 when the number of non-believers
will have overtaken the number of Christians.In
the past six years the number of Muslims has surged by 37 per cent to
2.6million, Hindus by 43 per cent and Buddhists by a massive 74 per
cent."...photo above of Chapel of St. Mary, Alamy via UK Daily Mail, via Free Republic============================Ed.note: Please excuse unpleasant white background behind part of this post. It was put there by an illegal hacker I've had for several years and whom I believe to be from google/blogger.

"Gay marriage? It came up at
dinner Down Under this time last year, and the prominent Aussie
politician on my right said matter-of-factly, “It’s not about expanding
marriage, it’s about destroying marriage.”

That would be the most obvious explanation as to why the same
societal groups who assured us in the Seventies that marriage was either
(a) a “meaningless piece of paper” or (b) institutionalized rape are
now insisting it’s a universal human right. They’ve figured out what,
say, terrorist-turned-educator Bill Ayers did — that, when it comes to
destroying core civilizational institutions,trying to blow them up is
less effective than hollowing them out from within.

On the other hand, there are those who argue it’s a victory for the
powerful undertow of bourgeois values over the surface ripples of sexual
transgressiveness: Gays will now be as drearily suburban as the rest of
us. A couple of years back, I saw a picture in the paper of two chubby
old queens tying the knot at City Hall in Vancouver, and the thought
occurred that Western liberalism had finally succeeded in boring all the
fun out of homosexuality.

Which of these alternative scenarios — the demolition of marriage or
the taming of the gay — will come to pass? Most likely, both. In the
upper echelons of society, our elites practice what they don’t preach.
Scrupulously nonjudgmental about everything except traditional Christian
morality, they nevertheless lead lives in which, as Charles Murray
documents in his book Coming Apart, marriage is still expected to be a lifelong commitment. It is easy to see moneyed gay newlyweds moving into such
enclaves, and making a go of it. As the Most Reverend Justin Welby, the
new Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the worldwide Anglican
Communion, said just before his enthronement the other day, “You see gay
relationships that are just stunning in the quality of the
relationship.”

“Stunning”: What a fabulous endorsement! But, amongst the
type of gay couple that gets to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury,
he’s probably right.
Lower down the socioeconomic scale, the quality gets more variable.
One reason why conservative appeals to protect the sacred procreative
essence of marriage have gone nowhere is because Americans are rapidly
joining the Scandinavians in doing most of their procreating without
benefit of clergy.

Seventy percent of black babies are born out of
wedlock, so are 53 percent of Hispanics (the “natural conservative
constituency” du jour, according to every lavishly remunerated
Republican consultant), and 70 percent of the offspring of poor white
women.Over half the babies born to mothers under 30 are now “illegitimate” (to use a quaintly judgmental formulation). For the first
three-and-a-half centuries of American settlement the bastardy rate (to
be even quainter) was a flat line in the basement of the graph, stuck
at 2 or 3 percent all the way to the eve of the Sixties. Today over 40
percent of American births are “non-marital,” which is significantly higher than Canada or Germany. “Stunning” upscale gays
will join what’s left of the American family holed up in a chichi Green
Zone, while beyond the perimeter the vast mounds of human rubble pile up
remorselessly. The conservative defense of marriage rings hollow
because for millions of families across this land the American marriage
is hollow.

If the Right’s case has been disfigured by delusion, the Left’s has
been marked by a pitiful parochialism. At the Supreme Court this week, Ted Olson, the former solicitor general, was one of many to invoke comparisons with Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that struck
down laws prohibiting interracial marriage. But such laws were never
more than a localized American perversion of marriage. In almost all
other common-law jurisdictions, from the British West Indies to
Australia, there was no such prohibition. Indeed, under the Raj, it’s
estimated that one in three British men in the Indian subcontinent took a
local wife. “Miscegenation” is a 19th-century American neologism.

When the Supreme Court struck down laws on interracial marriage,it was not
embarking on a wild unprecedented experiment but merely restoring the
United States to the community of civilized nations within its own legal
tradition. Ted Olson is a smart guy, but he sounded like Mary-Kate and
Ashley’s third twin in his happy-face banalities last week.

Yet, beyond the Court,liberal appeals to “fairness” are always the
easiest to make. Because, for too much of its history, this country was
disfigured by halfwit rules about who can sit where on public
transportation and at lunch counters, the default position of most
Americans today is that everyone should have the right to sit anywhere: If a woman wants to be a soldier and sit in a
foxhole in the Hindu Kush, sure, let her.
If a man self-identifies as a woman and wants to sit on the ladies’
toilet, where’s the harm? If a mediocre high-school
student wants to sit in a college class, that’s only fair.American
“rights” have taken on the same vapid character as grade-school sports:
Everyone must be allowed to participate, and everyone is entitled to the
same participation ribbon.

Underneath all this apparent “fairness” is a lot of unfairness. Entire
new categories of crime have arisen in the wake of familial collapse,
like the legions of adolescent daughters abused by Mom’s latest live-in
boyfriend. Millions of children are now raised in transient households
that make not just economic opportunity but even elementary
character-formation all but impossible. In the absence of an agreed
moral language to address this brave new world, Americans retreat to
comforting euphemisms like “blended families,” notwithstanding that the
familial Cuisinart seems to atomize at least as often as it blends.

Meanwhile, social mobility declines: Doctors who once married their
nurses now marry their fellow doctors; lawyers who once married their
secretaries now contract with fellow super-lawyers, like dynastic unions
in medieval Europe. Underneath the self-insulating elite, millions of
Americans are downwardly mobile: The family farmers and mill workers,
the pioneers who hacked their way into the wilderness and built a
township, could afford marriage and children; indeed, it was an economic
benefit. For their descendants doing minimum-wage service jobs about to
be rendered obsolete by technology, functioning families are a tougher
act, and children an economic burden. The gays looked at contemporary
marriage and called the traditionalists’ bluff.

Modern Family works well on TV, less so in the rusting
double-wides of decrepit mill towns where, very quickly, the accumulated
social capital of two centuries is drained, and too much is too
wrecked. In Europe, where dependency, decadence, and demographic decline
are extinguishing some of the oldest nations on earth,a successor
population is already in place in the restive Muslim housing projects.
With their vibrant multicultural attitudes to feminism and
homosexuality, there might even be a great sitcom in it: Pre-Modern Family — and, ultimately, post-Modern.

“Fiscal conservatives” recoil from this kind of talk like homophobes
at a bathhouse: The sooner some judge somewhere takes gay marriage off
the table the sooner the right can go back to talking about debt and
Obamacare without being dismissed as uptight theocratic bigots. But it doesn’t work like that. Most of the social liberalism comes with quite a price tag. The most reliable constituency for Big Government is single
women, for whom the state is a girl’s best friend, the sugar daddy whose
checks never bounce.A society in which a majority of births are out of
wedlock cannot be other than a Big Government welfare society. Ruining a
nation’s finances is one thing; debauching its human capital is far
harder to fix." via Free Republic

========================================

Ed. note: How does a massive, advanced western civilization crumble so quickly? Because only one side was fighting. Second, there were many Trojan Horses. The biggest Trojan Horse in the US has been and continues to be the Bush family. The left took control of the school system. To paraphrase Todd Gitlin, "we won the text books." Over time you can get people to believe anything. 82% of Muslims in Egypt believe you should be stoned to death for adultery per Pew poll.

Friday, March 29, 2013

"Farmers intend to plant 97.3 million acres of corn this year, the most
since 1936, the USDA's spring planting survey said Thursday.

The overall corn acreage forecast is upslightly from last year's 97.2
million acres and reflects a shift in where the grain is grown. Acreage
in some states hit hardest by last year's drought retreated, while
Southern states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas are shifting
cotton acres to corn
Chad Hart, an agriculture economist at Iowa State University, said Texas
is a prime example. The state is changing more than 1 million acres
normally planted in cotton for corn. Farmers there are in desperate need
of grain to feed livestock after two years of debilitating drought, and
are betting on a corn crop to replenish feed, Hart said.

Corn remains profitable, as prices are holding strong at around $7 per
bushel because drought conditions left the grain in short supply. Corn
stocks fell 10 percent from a year ago to 5.40 billion bushels, the
lowest March stockpiles since 2003, the USDA said in a separate report
Thursday.

Corn prices fell Thursday after the report was released, as it showed there was 7 percent more corn stockpiled than expected. Record corn acreage is expected in Arizona, Idaho, Minnesota, Nevada,
North Dakota, and Oregon. Iowa, the nation's leading corn producer, will
plant an estimated 14.2 million acres in corn, the same as last year.
And Minnesota is up 3 percent to 9 million acres.
But the states that suffered significantly during last year's drought —
the worst since the 1950s — expect to plant slightly less corn acreage:
Illinois' acres are down 5 percent to 12.2 million and Nebraska corn
acres are down 1 percent at 9.9 million acres.
Brad Tank, a farmer near the western Iowa town of Blencoe, said he
expects to plant his normal mix of half corn and half soybeans on his
685 acres.

"I'm hoping that with winter hanging on longer than it did last year that things will be a little more toward normal," he said.

The USDA report addressedother crops, too, including soybeans. Farmers
plan to plant 77.1 million acres — a small decline from 2012's 77.2
million acres but still the fourth highest on record.

Compared with last year, soybean acreage intentions are down across all
of the Great Plains, with the exception of North Dakota, as drought
conditions have persisted. However, increases in planted area across
most of the eastern Corn Belt and parts of the Southeast nearly balance
out the plains' declines.

If the estimates come to fruitionthe planted soybean areas in New
York, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania will be the largest on record. Iowa
soybean acres are expected to rise 1 percent to 9.4 million acres,
while Illinois is up 4 percent to 9.4 million. Nebraska is expected to
see soybeans acres fall about 6 percent to 4.7 million....

Growers in portions of the Corn Belt have had reason for optimism in
recent weeks as storms pummeled the nation's midsection with snow, in
some cases more than a foot deep.
As spring planting season nears, much of that has melted off, which has
boosted soil moisture and raised levels of riversthat often serve as irrigation sources.

But temperatures remain below normal throughout much of the Midwest. Missouri is weathering its coldest March in at least 17 years, and
frozen soil persists in east-central Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin.

The U.S. Drought Monitor's weekly report said Thursday that roughly half
of the continental U.S. remains in some form of drought,"...

Some 96 percent of Nebraska as of Tuesday was gripped by extreme or
exceptional drought — the two worst classifications — as was one-fifth
of Iowa and nearly two-thirds of Kansas." via Michael Savage. photo above ap, "photo from July 19, 2012, shows a corn field on a foggy morning near Springfield, Neb.The USDA is releasing its first estimate of the 2013
crop size in its spring planting report on Thursday, March 28, 2013."

"The PDSI is
updated weekly by the Climate Prediction Center. It is based on
rainfall, temperature and historic data, and is computed based on a
complex formula devised by W.C. Palmer in 1965. Although the Palmer is
the main drought index used by the U.S. government, it is slow to detect
fast-emerging droughts, and does not reflect snowpack,an important
component of water supply in the western United States."

===================================

Winter rain and snow have eliminated drought conditions in much of the midwest: